


The Tower

by Nilysil



Category: Warframe
Genre: Body Horror, Gen, Mawframe, Non-canon biology, Possession, Void Corruption
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-20
Updated: 2017-05-20
Packaged: 2018-11-03 01:18:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,346
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10956696
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nilysil/pseuds/Nilysil
Summary: Trapped in the void, Xev is a servant to the neural sentry‘s defenses.





	The Tower

**Intruders**.

 **Intruders in the tower, the neural sentry screams**.

A surge of energy floods his numb sensors, jolting his systems alive. It cascades through him in a sudden rush of twitches and jolts, striking wall and floor as the alarms scrape at his dull mind, filling his cortex with agonizing pain – **Get up**.

The arch of his gilded but bloody head scrapes at the wall as his head is drawn back, pressing against the stammering pain buried deep inside his gold-trim skull. He strikes back once, twice, the sound of sharp contact resounding through the bloody hallway he had fallen into unconsciousness before, one of many within the Void Tower.

 **GET UP**.

Energy surges through the decrepit prime again, alighting his off-white flesh in brilliant cyan.

His exhausted limbs quiver and twitch as he forces himself from the floor at the behest of the neural sentry, an ailed effort to relieve the scratching dug deep in the frayed fragments of his mind. Muscles twitch and jolt as he rises to his feet, barely stable as the shakes persist through every step. The prime wobbles, his gait irregular as he follows the beckoning of the neural sentry’s alarms hammering in his skull, his clawed hands pressing at his head.

The prime’s dull whites and grey are stained, caked with dried blood from previous intruders – a count that remains untracked. His arms are soaked and near rendered black by the stains of bodies he’s torn apart; the front of his helm near rendered the same at his maw splits open. What does remain clean of spilt gore is his sharp teeth, a white contrast to his black flesh and bloodied face.

He heaves gaseous heat from his gapping maw, following the echoes of a distant expedition team.

 **Kill**.

 **Kill the intruders**.

The Excalibur Prime’s wobbling gait rights itself as the neural sentry grants itself control over his nervous system, canceling and disabling his pain receptors in a single motion, in turn calming the prime’s scrambled brain of unnecessary agony. Even then, the sentry’s control keeps his senses scrambled, repressing independent thought for the task of protecting itself from the intruders.

His approach to the tower’s alerted room is traced with a false calm, the prime’s movements light and flowing as he walks, a façade corrupted by twitching muscles and steaming maw. Darken claws scratch at the air, an aching within him to dig them down through fresh gore. The sentry’s alarms dull, the hammering pulses deluding as he nears the final door separating him from the tower intruders.

A final preemptive surge of energy pulses through him on the last approach; his breath in gasps as his systems struggle and overheat, teetering at the brink of unconsciousness if not by the will of the neural sentry hammering at his mind. Pulsations rumble in his chest. Overflowing energy surges through his systems. Snarling as each heaved exhale forces through his teeth.

The gilded doors slide open; his hands twist into open grasps.

Below him, the prime can see the squadron of intruders. Down a short flight of stairs in the middle of the room they stand, covered in thick suits and accompanied by bipedal machines. They’re staring at him, still and conversing among themselves in a language he does not know. One of them points, their face obscured by a thick square helmet.

One of the many draws their weapon, only for it to be lowered by another. An unheard conversation, and the leader of the intruders step up to the prime; their footsteps echo as they walk up the stairs – the sound reverberating and slamming in his head.

 **Kill** ; the neural sentry beckons, **kill**.

The leader’s words fall on his deafened ears, his circuits and nerves alight in blooming static and energy pulsations. They’re getting closer, a few steps away, just barely out of reach.

The intruder stops, their words lost to the static boring through his skull.

His off-white flesh lights with a glow of blue; the intruder moves.

Bloodied claws rend their thick suit in an instant, pulling them close as his digits slicken in fresh blood and gore. The prime claws at their warm entrails, tearing at muscle and stomach as the intruder’s words turn into garbles, breathing heaving as they try to push the corrupted warframe away.

Another of the intruders shouts something. The prime is quick to catch onto the rising panic and releases a disjointed screech from his pearly maw, throwing the leader intruder against a wall with a crack. And lunges.

The intruder’s guns are on him in an instant; a blitzing flurry of half-concentrated shots chip away at his shields as his claws dig into another soon-be corpse. He barely budges as the rounds make it past his weak shields, his only reaction is in his grunting breaths, in how deep he claws into the screaming intruder. Growls roll from his overheated chest as they continue their panicking volley, tossing the limp body away at their bipedal machines.

 **Kill the intruders**.

Energy swarms into his right arm, stabbing downward tears into his palm in the form of his exalted blade. The shattering sparks of agony boil through his steaming maw, a rolling guttural roar in tandem with the blade bursting into brilliant light.

Blinded by the brilliant light, the intruders scream. Screams that fall into the backdrop of another static surge, clawing through his gut as viciously as his claws do into the soft flesh of the clothed intruders. He rends their suits into tatters, scratching jagged gashes through their fragile flesh in his eccentric motions from target to target. His claws moist and sticking, clotted with torn viscera and scraps of their clothing.

After tearing through the last of the humanoid intruders, he starts on their bipedal machines.

They’re harder to silence; his claws only scratch at their green armor as they whistle and chirp.

In the distance, he can see a pair running.

 **Don’t let them escape** , the neural sentry screams in his head.

Energy surges through his forearms; drawing his hands together in a sickly moist clasp that slides and slips – through the bloodied palms the surge expels in the shape of a brilliant cyan blade, glowing and bathing his saturated hands in righteous light.

In a quick moment, the running pair laid dead – cleaved by a soaring cut.

The bipedal machines around him fall among their groaning and gasping companions, their live wires sparking from the cleaved cuts. For a moment, he stands amongst the dying intruders, blade clean of gore, blood dripping from his gripping palm. The walls are sprayed, blood pooling at his feet and their ruined grasping bodies.

Their words are garbled, a disgusting mix of their language choking on overflowing blood, bubbling over their unseen mouths as they begin to die. An intruder tries to pull themselves onto him, bloodied fingers clutching on the jut from his outer thigh. Their grey helmet is fractured, exposing a wounded temple and a furious stare.

The prime’s exalted blade bites through their gaze, a body lies limp at his heels.

He remains there, a vicious statue breathing steamed air, clutched hands dripping blood in the center of the intruder massacre. The last survivors curse in their mother tongue, words unheard to the frenzy of static still processing the prime’s mind; until the last of them dies, and the tower reads him as the only life signal.

 **Intruders eliminated** , the neural sentry coos.

In a sudden rush the energy he had received from the omnipresent observer is gone, forcing his exalted blade to burst, forcing his nerves to reignite with old and new pain. He clutches at his gut, black blood gushing from a resurged injury as a kick echoes through his empty gut.

Feed; he has to feed.

His clutch is weak, his legs crumbling beneath him as the surging agony overrides his systems, well burnt out of the sudden rush and extensive overheating. He’s gasping, bloodied claws grabbing at his tense chest, scratching at the aches until he falls into unconsciousness – returning to dormancy.

**Author's Note:**

> And there he stays, until the tower has need for him again.
> 
> -+-
> 
> Kudos, comments and sharing are encouraged!


End file.
